Do you think it’s useful to learn Latin/Greek grammar paradigms by heart?
Yes, absolutely. How could you have a working knowledge of Latin/Greek grammer without knowing the paradigms?
When we started to learn Latin in high school we had to learn some paradigms by heart. But after two years whe started to read texts and we were allowed to look the grammer up in a dictionary.
That way you will never learn to read, only to translate, and very slowly with that. Just write them out a couple times a day for a month or two, you’ll be fine.
Unfortunately yes! As I found when I was was learning music, the only way to play fluently or read another language fluently was to be able to recognise everything at sight.
It’s a pain as I have to hammer everything into my brain relentlessly to remember anything - I can’t even remember my car registration number, dates or anything important. I find using silly rhymes or singing things sometimes helps to remember vocabulary.
Pharr discusses this some in his introduction. He states:
I believe his feeling is that you should memorize the important and common forms, but not get bogged down on the rare and irregulars.
Yes, that is true, most of us wouldn’t know every word in our native language, especially technical terms etc. But the common tenses and word forms should be learnt.
Well, yes. However, it is not necessary to use rote memorization. Though I did some of the rote thing, I mainly learned my forms by doing a lot of reading and running into forms frequently. And also, as it has been said it is not essential to memorize every bizarre form.
If knowing all the different declensions was good enough for a Roman, it’s good enough for me. maybe they didn’t have to use flash cards, but they knew them. the same goes for any declensional language. that’s my opinion anyway.
-Jon
The average high school graduate only knows 1500 English words. If you know 3500 words in English you belong to the top 5% of all English speakers.
Classical language teachers have given me different opinions. Some say that it’s better to practise and use the language. You learn a lot from creating sentences and reading texts and less from memorising grammar.
The average high school graduate only knows 1500 English words. If you know 3500 words in English you belong to the top 5%.
Only 1500? That seems very low, especially if they have taken English Lit. I’ll accept your figure as this has probably been researched by someone. I hardly ever see a word in a book that I do not understand, usually a technical term. But then, I read a lot!
The ideal is to learn the paradigms, rather than memorizing, by context, the way the Romans did. I’d say writing them out once or twice is extremely helpful, but this should come after already possessing a rudimentary fluent reading knowledge of Latin. I realize this is a turn from my previous opinion regarding the Dowling Method, which I think can be effective if your mind works that way, but it’s not necessary. Natural fluidity is the key.
I did not mean to imply that study should be confined to writing out paradigms. Learning paradigms without seeing them applied will not be that useful at all - knowing what an ablative/dative looks like is nice, but it is more important to learn how to use it. What I ment was to just write them, or part of them, out regularly in addition to learning grammar and reading. Eg. write out the first declension while your having breakfast or something, it will only take a few minutes.
I agree that you will really learn them and their uses by reading and writing a lot.
Are you talking about as a first or a second language. I would say, at present, my French vocabulary (that is, recognition at sight) is about 1500 words, though it used to be higher when I used French more. I would say that my Ancient Greek vocabulary is certainly above 1500, and l think there are at least 1500 words which I can call into my head, not just recognize at sight. And yes, I do a lot of reading in every language I know well.
I think 15,000 words might be more like it.
For instance, “Yet the average English speaker possesses a vocabulary of 10,000 to 20,000 words, Lederer observes, but actually uses only a fraction of that, the rest being recognition or recall vocabulary.”
from http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/journalism/chal.html
Or here: “The average vocabulary of an educated native English speaker is about 24,000 to 30,000.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10377355
-David
Thanks for the links. I heard this in English class, but I think the teacher meant to say that avarage high school graduates only use 1500 of the many words they know during conversation or in writing. This amount will increase during college he said.
And yes, I do a lot of reading in every language I know well.
You’re an above avarage student. 
Learning to recognise paradigms and forms is of the utmost importance. This is often just as important as learning vocabulary and syntax.
I think it depends on the Language. Latin, yes. Greek, no.
Along these same lines:
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According to the Pimsleur people (who make foreign language tapes): “For example, research shows that there are approximately only 100 words that make up 50% of any spoken language. The Saturday edition of the New York Times newspaper contains, on average, only 600 different words.”
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In The Frequency of Latin Words and Their Endings Paul Diedrich found 1471 words that occurred 20 or more times in a large group of key literature he examined. He found that these words represent roughly 85% of the words one will encounter in the Latin literature; he also found that about another 10% could easily be deduce either because they were compounds of these words or as obvious roots of English derivatives. Anyway, he put together a list of these words (grouped quite nicely to aid memory) and recommended that students of Latin focus on learning these words.
pustakasy? tu y? vidy? parahastagata? dhanam |
k?ryak?le samutpanne na s? vidy? na taddhanam ||
Knowledge that is in note-books in (our) shelves, and
(our) money now in the hands of others, both are useless.
When time comes for their use neither that knowledge
nor that wealth will be available.
PS. edonnelly, it’s funny to see your avatar change every time I check this forum. 